tory to where the road of fate divided. Thus far we have never failed to take the right path. Again are we come to the parting of the ways. Again a momentous choice is offered to us. Shall we hesitate and make, in coward fashion, what Dante calls 'the great refusal? Even now we can abandon the Monroe Doctrine, we can reject the Pacific, we can shut ourselves up between our oceans, as Switzerland is inclosed among her hills, and then it would be inevitable that we should sink out from among the great powers of the world and heap up riches that some stronger and bolder people, who do not fear their fate, might gather them. Or we may follow the true laws of our being, the laws in obedience to which we have come to be what we are, and then we shall stretch out into the Pacific; we shall stand in the front rank of the world powers; we shall give to our labor and our industry new and larger and better opportunities; we shall prosper ourselves; we shall benefit mankind. What we have done was inevitable because it was in accordance with the laws of our being as a nation, in the defiance and disregard of which lie ruin and retreat."

CHAPTER X.

THE PHILIPPINES-HOW THEY MAY BE GOVERNED

The Philippine policy of the McKinley administration is the same as the policy of President Thomas Jefferson in regard to Louisiana when that great territory was secured from France in 1803. The bill now before Congress for government control in the Philippines is almost identical with the act passed by Congress in 1803 for the government of Louisiana. It might almost be said that President McKinley and the Republicans in Congress had adopted the Jeffersonian policy in reference to the Philippines. These islands came under the American flag by the fortunes of war and were retained by the Treaty of Peace with Spain. They are now territory belonging to the United States. The time has passed for discussion as to whether they shall be retained, or whether the influence and authority of the United States shall expand to the Philippines. That has already been done, and not by the President alone, but by Congress. The Senate and the House of Representatives have ratified the Treaty of Peace, the Senate by direct vote on that question and the House by passing the bill appropriating $20,000,000 to be paid to Spain in compensation for public improvements in the Philippines. Democrats as well as the Republicans voted for both these measures. The Treaty of Peace was ratified by a two-thirds vote in the Senate at a time when the Republicans did not have a full majority of that body. The vote in the House on the appropriation bill to carry out the compact of the treaty was almost unanimous. This being the political situation, it is idle for either party to now deny responsibility for securing the Philippines as territory belonging to the United States, or talking of undoing what has been done. "The paramount issue" of "imperialism" raised by the Democratic National Convention is, if it is anything, repudiation of the Treaty of Peace between Spain and the United States after it has gone into effect with the consent of the Democratic party. Mr. Bryan, the Democratic candidate for President, went to Washington to urge Democratic senators to vote for the ratification of the Treaty of Peace, and by so doing he placed himself in accord with President McKinley in recognizing that the flag could not be withdrawn from the Philippines.

Senator Hoar, who has been and will be quoted as opposed to the retention of the Philippines, made his fight against the ratification of the Treaty, and he is now supporting President McKinley. Senator Hoar in a recent letter to the Anti-Imperialist League of Boston said that "the treaty was the great battle-ground in this matter," and "senators who voted for that treaty, whether under Mr. Bryan's influence or for any motive, were quite as bitter and indignant as your expressions now about me.” Mr. Hoar then said in the letter to Mr. Winslow:

"Let no one answer this by saying these expressions of sympathy and approval were made because of my position toward imperialism. They were made with full and distinct knowledge on the part of those making them, including yourself, and on the part of the leading antiimperialists everywhere throughout the country, that I remained a Republican and purposed to support President McKinley and refused to support Mr. Bryan, not only because of all the other objections to him and his party, but because he had interposed when the treaty would otherwise have been beaten and secured its adoption by his personal influence.

"He did not merely fail to prevent the passage of the treaty, as one bright critic of mine has said, but he procured its passage. Without him it would not have been ratified. He, through votes he controlled, bought 10,000,000 people and paid for them at $2 a head. He made it the law of this land-for all treaties are the law of the land--that the American Congress should dispose of that distinct, alien people, whether they liked it or not.

“And you undertake to defend him by suggesting that he hoped to nullify that action by declaration of one house of Congress. That could be of no possible validity unless concurred in by the House of Representatives and approved by the President; neither of which, as he and as you well knew, was there the slightest hope of at that time.

"I will not debate with you the question whether I am wrong. I expect to debate that question in due time. If you think you can best help the cause of liberty and true Republicanism by voting for the men who are for the free coinage of silver at 16 to 1, by voting for men who are for refusing 10,000,000 American citizens suffrage at home, for overthrowing the independence of the Supreme Court, and for destroying the safeguards of property and American labor, very well. Go your way and do your duty as you see it. I shall do mine as I see it, and

I think I can best do it by speaking as a Republican to Republicans; by keeping my right to speak as a counselor and associate of the men who have wrought for liberty in this country since the Treaty of Peace in 1783, and not as the associate or through the instrumentality of the party or men who have been ranged for sixty years on the side of despotism and oppression, of dishonor and of low wages."

It is only fair to Senator Hoar that his position should be understood. He was opposed to the treaty by which the Philippines became territory of the United States. He is opposed to the election of Mr. Bryan and all others who call themselves anti-imperialists in this campaign. He is a Republican supporting President McKinley and the Republican platform.

While men of both parties differed in opinion as to the advisability of retaining the Philippines, and Judge Day, the President of the United States Peace Commission, was opposed to such a proposition, there appeared no other way of deciding their future. Senator Spooner of Wisconsin presented the reasons for keeping them in his speech in the Senate. He said:

"It was hardly to be expected, Mr. President, after our navy had broken the power of Spain in both seas, and after Spain had applied for a suspension of hostilities with a view to a Treaty of Peace, that a people who, without cause of war which it chose to enforce on its own behalf, had poured out its treasure and the blood of its sons for the liberty of another people alien to them, because of cruelty and oppression which could not longer be tolerated, would be willing that in the end of that struggle another people, vastly greater in number, who had also been subject to the same tyranny, should be left in the hands of Spain. By the fortunes of war we were there.

"It would have seemed to the world, many of us thought, that we had carried our flag of liberty to the mountain top, where all the world could see it, and then, afraid to meet responsibility, shuddering from duty, had incontinently run with it into the valley below, where no man could see it or would wish to see it.

"It has been thought that if all mention of the Philippines had been omitted from the treaty, Spain never could have retaken those islands. Mr. President, I have never believed that. I have had no doubt myself that Spain would have resumed her sway in the Philippine Archipelago. I have never seen any reason to doubt it. First, it must be remembered

that we had sent back to Spain 142,000 soldiers, with their arms. Spain, no longer involved in Cuba or in Porto Rico; Spain, vanquished by us, but proud and haughty, would not have been willing to abandon the last of her possessions-that one in the Pacific seas.

"We would have been obliged in honor to march our troops out of Manila and to allow the troops of Spain, in such numbers as she chose, to occupy the city. Spain then had a navy free. Many of the nations. of the world sympathized with her. They all would have preferred her retention of the Philippines to strife among themselves for their possession, as there would have been.

"The holders of Spanish bonds all over Europe, based upon a hypothecation of the revenues of Cuba, Porto Rico, and possibly the Philippines, would have been eager to furnish the money, for obvious reasons, to enable Spain to retain her great Pacific possession, and with her fleet and her troops she would, with comparative ease, have resumed her sway in the Philippines.

"We could not do that, we thought; and there was not a man in the Senate then, nor is there one here now, I take it, who would have been willing that all mention of the Philippines should have been omitted from that treaty.

"Even Aguinaldo contemplated the possibility that the treaty might leave the Philippines with Spain, and the certainty that Spain would attempt to resume her sovereignty there. In his letter of August 21, 1898, to the commanding officer of our forces, in reply to the demand that he withdraw his forces from Manila, he stated thus one of the conditions of such withdrawal:

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"They also (referring to the Filipinos) desire that if in consequence of the Treaty of Peace which may be concluded between the United States of America and Spain the Philippines should continue under the domination of the latter, the American forces should give up all the suburbs to the Filipinos, in consideration of the co-operation lent by the latter in the capture of Manila.'

"In reply to this he was informed that in the event of the United States withdrawing from these islands care would be taken to leave him in as advantageous position as he was found by the forces of the Government."

Senator Spooner also replied to the assertion that Aguinaldo and his insurgent followers were allies of the United States.